The instant L.A. Clipper
owner Donald T. Sterling's racist rants hit the airwaves the cry went up far and
wide that Sterling must go. There was virtually no dissent from the demand that
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver make that happen. He did. Silver's lifetime ban of
Sterling from the league, a maximum fine levied on him, and a vow to shove him
out of Clipper ownership was universally applauded. It seemed to send the
message that the NBA will come down hard on a loose hinged, racist owner.

But that still doesn't
tell why Sterling lasted as long as he did as the loose hinged bigot that had
to be worst kept secret on the planet and why he's still around and likely will
be around the NBA and sports until he decides that he doesn't want to be. The
starting point is not his fabulous wealth, influence and a drop dead media, PR
and charitable machine that's second to none. Put simply, Sterling was embedded
in the NBA and sport by dint of longevity and a team ownership structure that
confers unassailable emperor-like powers on those who own the teams.

The NBA is a prime
example. There's no one owner who's a kingmaker in the league. The wealth and
power is spread almost evenly around. In fact, it can rightly be said that each
NBA team owner not only owns his team but owns a big and crucial piece of the
NBA pie. This insures that no one owner has an unfair advantage over any other
owner. The spread the wealth and with it control among the owners was sealed in
stone in 2013 when the NBA's 13 member planning committee radically
restructured its team revenue sharing plan that shifted a big chunk of the
revenue and advertising revenue from the big name, big money market, marquee
teams to the smaller fry.

The estimate then was
that would plop nearly $20 million into each team's coffers. This was a God
send to the league's poorer teams. The aim at the top was to insure financial
stability for the weaker brothers. The end game was to further insure that all
owners had a major say so in the running of the NBA's business. The less heeled
owners were unabashed in their praise of the deal as one owner put it "we have
the same goals and aspirations." Translated: all teams and their owners are now
on an equal plain in the NBA and that means no owner can get a one upmanship on
another.

Sterling could hardly be
called a charity case among the NBA mega owners. And though the Clippers were for
decades a laughing stock second to the Lakers in the L.A. market, he benefited
mightily from the new arrangement. It guaranteed that his already large voice
in the NBA's governance and decision making would remain secure.

He had a few other trump
cards to guarantee that. Advertising, sponsorship and TV revenue is huge for
the teams. They are all intimately intertwined in the league's planning,
operations, and strategy for growth. Sterling's coffers were steadily filled by
cash from the some of America's biggest and best known corporations, Coke,
T-Mobile, American Express, Budweiser, Toyota and the list goes on and on.

Another is Sterling's
money and the company it and he keeps. He's a multi-billionaire and so are a
good number of the other NBA owners. In fact, six of Sterling's big money circle
of NBA owners has fortunes that top $5 billion. Taken together the 14 NBA owner
billionaires have a combined net wealth of $76 billion.

But the real numbers are
in what a team will fetch on the open market. The low side estimate on the
Clippers' value on an open market sale is $475 million. The high side is $700.
The truth is no one really knows what it would ultimately go for. That's
Sterling's final trump card. He still is defiantly says he won't sell no matter
what the commissioner and the other NBA owners demand.

It will take a
well-heeled knot of investors to plop down the kind of cash needed for the
purchase of the team, if and when, he does sell. Despite the loud calls for
Sterling to get out of the business, and Silver's vow to do everything within
his very limited power to try and push him out the door, the call is still
Sterling's.

Given the tight, cozy,
and complex powerhouse lock that Sterling had for decades along with the other
owners over control of the NBA, this won't easily change. That's not to say
that Sterling can continue to roam free, snub his nose at the world, or even continue
to laugh all the way to the bank while everyone takes potshots at him. He's
hopelessly tainted, and damaged goods, and a now pariah to boot. That's a price
he'll pay for being the latest poster boy for unwashed, naked bigotry. He just
may not have to pay the other price of being an ex-NBA owner any time soon.

Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of
the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How
Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of
New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour
heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally acclaimed author and political analyst. He has authored ten books; his articles are published in newspapers and magazines nationally in the United States. Three of his books have been published in other (more...)